1 The day I was finally whole again. Daisy squeezed me tight, her eyes rimmed with red, her body trembling with joy. "Oh, Harry," she whispered, her voice thick with tears. "We can finally have a baby of our own!" Everyone said Daisy was crazy about me, that she'd do anything I asked. And I believed them. Until I saw the videos her first love sent me. Intimate, tangled, undeniable. I stopped her as she was setting up the crib we’d just bought. I walked right up to her, my voice steady, my heart a stone. "Let's not have the baby." I felt her entire body go rigid. I twisted the knife. "Daisy," I said. "Let's get a divorce." The little wooden rattle in Daisy's hand slipped from her grasp, landing on the plush carpet with a soft, muffled thud. She looked up at me, her face a mask of disbelief. "Harry." She stepped closer, reaching for my hands. "Are you kidding me?" Her expression was so earnest, as if I were the center of her universe, so much so that I could feel the tremor in her fingers as she clutched mine. "This isn't a funny joke." "Harry, stop messing around." She thought I was throwing a tantrum. A wave of bitter cold washed over me. "I'm not kidding." My voice was flat. I gently pulled my hands from her grasp, pushing down the acid sting in my throat. "I'm dead serious." "Daisy." I held up my phone, open to the chat history, to the photos and videos the man had sent me. I watched the color drain from her face, her expression freezing over, her mouth opening to form an explanation I no longer wanted to hear. I cut her off. "You told him you wanted his baby," I said, my voice eerily calm. "You told him if it was a boy, you'd name him Caleb. A girl, Ryan." I was trying, I really was, to keep myself together, to end this with some shred of dignity. Just like we’d promised each other when we started—if it ever ends, let's make it clean. But then I looked at her face, and I remembered her whispering the same things to me, her lips brushing against my cheek in the afterglow of our own passion. I remembered her holding me, her voice full of breathless hope. "Harry, if we have a baby… let's have a boy and a girl." "We'll call the boy Caleb." "And the girl, Ryan." I didn’t understand the significance of the names back then. I’d asked her why, but she’d just smiled and said she liked the sound of them. I didn’t push. They sounded nice enough to me. What a fucking joke. I stared at her, tearing her lies apart without a second thought. "It wasn't because they sounded nice, was it? It was because his name," I could feel my whole body start to shake, my jaw clenched so tight my words came out shuddering, "is Ethan Caleb Ryan." "Your first love. The one you never got over." "It's not like that!" Daisy cried, her eyes flashing with panic as she reached for me. But the dam inside me broke. "IF YOU LOVED HIM SO MUCH, WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST TELL ME?" I roared, my voice shredding raw. "I WOULD HAVE LET YOU GO!" "DID YOU THINK I'D CLING TO YOU? DID YOU?" In a blind rage, I snatched a stuffed animal from the crib and hurled it at her. But she didn't flinch. She threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around me in a suffocating grip, holding on so tightly I couldn't breathe. I was choking, drowning in her betrayal, and in a primal, desperate act, I bit down hard on the soft flesh of her neck. I heard her sharp intake of breath, a pained grunt, but she didn't let go. "It's not like that!" she sobbed into my shoulder, her tears soaking my shirt. "Harry!" "It's not!" "I'm sorry, Harry! I'm so sorry!" "I was wrong! I know I was wrong!" 2 Honestly. I just wanted the divorce. I just wanted us to walk away from this without it getting any uglier. But Daisy called in the cavalry. She summoned both our families, and suddenly our spacious living room was cramped and suffocating, packed with every relative we had. They sat in a semi-circle, my parents and hers, staring at me as if I were a criminal on trial. They were here to pass judgment. I saw Daisy’s aunt looking me up and down, a sneer twisting her lips. "Look at him. Playing the stay-at-home husband has given you quite an ego." She sniffed. "Daisy works herself to the bone so you can live a life of leisure, and this is the thanks she gets? An attitude?" Daisy's mother chimed in, her voice dripping with false sympathy. "Harry, dear, Daisy is not the kind of woman who would cheat. Why else would she have married you? She truly loves you. She wouldn't have asked us all to come here to talk sense into you if she didn't." She reached over and squeezed my own mother's hand, and my mom immediately turned on me. "Harry Alexander Price! You stop this nonsense right now! You won't find another woman as good as Daisy if you live to be a hundred! What more could you possibly want?" My father delivered the final verdict. "This is not happening. As long as Daisy doesn't want a divorce, you won't get one. If you dare bring this up again," he jabbed a finger at me, "I'll break your legs myself." The two families, united as one, sat in judgment of me, the sinner. I sat in the middle, weathering the storm of their accusations, their anger, their disappointment. When the shouting finally died down, Daisy spoke. "Harry," she said, her voice soft as she took my hand. "I have never, ever wanted to divorce you." "I can explain. Just let me explain." To prove her sincerity, she dialed Ethan’s number right there in front of everyone and put him on speaker. She demanded he vouch for her, for their "innocence." "You've got my husband thinking I'm cheating, and now he wants to leave me!" she cried into the phone. "Tell him the truth, right now!" Ethan’s voice, slick and unconcerned, filled the silent room. "Jesus, I was just messing with him. Can't he take a joke?" He then addressed me directly. "What's your problem, man? So I dated your wife for a few years. Everyone has a past. What, you expected her to be a virgin? Are you?" Listening to his casual disdain, after the barrage from our families and Daisy’s pathetic theatrics, something inside me snapped. Before Daisy could stop me, I lunged, snatching the phone from her hand. "If you were so 'innocent,' you wouldn't have added me and sent me that shit!" I yelled, my voice trembling with rage. "Ethan, is it? If you're so damn clean, what do you call hitting on a married woman? Is it a hobby, getting off on wrecking marriages? Or is your own life so miserable you can't stand to see anyone else happy—" Ethan’s voice exploded from the speaker. "What the FUCK did you just say to me?" "DAISY! Are you just going to let your husband talk to me like that? Are you just going to stand there and—" CRACK. The sharp, stinging impact of a palm against my cheek silenced him. I raised a hand to my face, staring at Daisy in stunned disbelief. Her eyes were wide with panic. "Harry, I didn't mean to—" "Hahahaha, Harry!" Ethan's mocking laughter echoed from the phone. "Got what you deserved, didn't you?" "I'm telling you, Harry, I can say whatever I want because your wife gives me the power to! Daisy is wrapped around my little finger, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!"
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